John Mayall

More steps in time....

John Mayall, he was the master of it. If it wasn't for the British musicians, a lot of us black musicians in America would still be catchin' the hell that we caught long before. So thanks to all you guys, thank you very much!

- B.B. King

Last week, I revisited the beginnings of my Jazz journey with a look back at my grade school days in the 1970s when the movies and soundtracks of Fred Astaire introduced me to jazz. But now you might be thinking, “OK, but how does one go from Fred Astaire to Sun Ra?” All I can say is just like all journeys, you take it one step at a time. For the past few days, I have been thinking about my journey, trying to understand the path I took from Fred Astaire.

It is difficult to remember back over 50 years, but along with the Astaire movies, I do recall a friend up the street who gave me a James Bond soundtrack album for my birthday while I was still in grade school. He knew I was a big Bond fan. Those Bond movies and that album introduced me to a sound I would later realize was jazz. You can read more about that here:

Bond, James Bond.

Another early memory is from my first year in high school. I took an art class and never got along with the teacher - she was a bit of an art tyrant. Interestingly, she lived right up the street, and when I’d walk or drive by her house I forever had this memory of her. During parent-teacher conferences, she chided me for never turning in my color wheel. In her English accent, my mom piped in, ”Oh, don’t be ridiculous. He learned his color wheel years ago!” I recall the teacher pretty much shutting down at that point - she had met her match. In fact, I had learned the color wheel in grade school while my best friend Jeff Butcher and I were taking painting lessons with Mrs. Berg. However, she became allergic to turpentine, and that was the end of that….

Anyway, my high school art teacher did have good taste in music. I remember at the start of her lecture on Frank Lloyd Wright, she dimmed the lights and started a tape recorder playing Simon & Garfunkel's So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright. While she placed on an overhead projector transparent pictures of his fantastic homes and buildings, the song looped over and over for about 20 minutes. I wasn’t a fan of Simon & Garfunkel, but the song, with acoustic guitar, flute, and no drums, put me in a trance. I remember not paying attention to my art teacher and just listening to the song. The song had the feel of an album in my brother’s record collection: John Mayall’s The Turning Point.

As it turned out, that record was a turning point for me. If I had to pick one album that infiltrated my soul and started to move me away from blues and into jazz, it was The Turning Point.

Early on, I was a blues guy more than I was ever a rock guy, which was odd in the 1970s when rock was exploding. In fact, the first “concert” I ever went to was John Hammond at Wilebski's Blues Saloon in St. Paul. I first learned to play the harmonica from listening to rock music like J. Geils Band’s Whammer Jammer and Doobie Brothers’ Long Train Runnin’. This was about 1974 or 1975, and I’d carry the harp in my pocket and when these songs came on the car radio, I’d pull it out and jam along in the car.

Then one day, out of the blue, my mom brought home for me a couple of blues albums she had picked out of the cutouts at Kmart: a Big Walter Horton album and an early B.B. King album. It was listening to that Big Walter Horton album and later a Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee album from the library that helped me learn to play blues harp.

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For Mayall, his 1969 The Turning Point was an innovative shift away from leading electric guitar-heavy blues bands with Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, and Peter Green. While in LA in 1969, he decided to form a strange acoustic, drummerless quartet featuring acoustic guitarist John Mark along with Mayall’s former bandmates bassist Steven Thompson and reedman Johnny Almond, who had just released a pair of interesting jazz albums. I think Mike Neely in his 2003 All About Jazz article does a good job describing this band:

John Mayall's position in the British Blues world of the 1960s was akin to Art Blakey's position in the North American jazz scene. Both were gifted discoverers and developers of talent in addition to being notable musicians. At various times, Eric Clapton, Peter Green, John McVie, and Jack Bruce were members of Mayall's ever changing band. In 1968, about the time when the talented blues guitarist Mick Taylor left to play for the Rolling Stones, Mayall radically reconceived his usual electric guitar led format. His live album The Turning Point was the refined result of this risk taking.

Mayall eliminated the drummer in his new mix. Perhaps this was partially inspired by the presence of the talented bassist Steve Thompson, a deeply jazz-influenced musician who provided a surprisingly flexible foundation for this innovative band. Both Mayall and acoustic guitarist Jon Mark ably switched off in the rhythm guitar role, helping to highlight the intricacy of exchange among the band's musicians. With an acoustic guitar and, at times, a flute in the mix this drummerless arrangement was ideal.

The first three tracks on Side 1 are hard-charging. But it was the last track, Almond’s sax on Hard To Share, that went straight to the heart. Then on the flip side, California. was something altogether different. Then again, on the next track, Thoughts About Roxanne, Johnny Almond’s saxophone was so cool.

Those two songs on Side 2 got my attention much more than the hit Room To Move. Yes, The Turning Point is where it all started for me. Through it, I discovered two important, more jazz-focused albums from members of that band: Johnny Almond Music Machine’s 1969 Hollywood Blues; and Mark-Almond’s 1972 Rising.

Johnny Almond recorded on a couple of classic Mayall albums: Mayall’s 1966 Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton and his 1967 Hard Road. In 1969, while in LA and a few months before joining Mayall’s The Turning Point band, he released Johnny Almond Music Machine’s Hollywood Blues, a jazz-heavy session recorded at Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood. His band was stacked: Joe Pass on guitar, Charles Kynard on organ, Curtis Amy, Hadley Caliman, and Vi Redd on horns, Ray Neapolitan on bass, and Joe Harris on drums. That was one solid music machine! Here is my favorite from the album, Agadir Sunset:

You have to dig Chicago native Ray Neapolitan’s bass on this track.

The second important album was Mark-Almond’s Rising.

I just picked up this one at a local used record store because I realized Jon Mark and Johnny Almond were the guys on Mayall’s The Turning Point. Right out of the gate on the first track on Side 1 was Monday Bluesong:

Again, this was an all-new sound and feel for me. As I listen to Monday Bluesong now, I hear Gil Evans and Miles Davis. And on the last track on Side 1, I’ll Be Leaving Soon, I hear Stan Getz. These albums were the real roots of my jazz journey - but I didn’t know it at the time.

Then, I picked up another seminal Mayall album, Jazz Blues Fusion, released in 1972:

This was the album that brought the word “Jazz” into my vocabulary. It allowed me to identify the sounds I had been hearing and liked as Jazz. This album featured Jazz legend Blue Mitchell on trumpet, Clifford Solomon on alto and tenor saxophones, and Freddy Robinson on guitar. Listen to Robinson cut loose on Change Your Ways:

At that time, I had no idea who Blue Mitchell was. I would learn more about him many years later. You can read more about him here:

Blue Mitchell

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Besides Mayall’s The Turning Point and the albums that spurred off from it, I recall three more important albums that, in particular, caught my attention and drew me into the current of that Big River called Jazz:

1.) Carlos Santana’s 1973 Welcome, which I found in my brother’s record collection. This was a pivotal album in many ways. First, it totally surprised me when I first played it, thinking it would be a rock album. This was not the Santana of Black Magic Woman that I had heard on the radio. It was an entirely new sound, and I loved it. Second, Welcome’s Samba de Sausalito piqued my curiosity for Latin-influenced and Mother Africa for African-influenced music. Here is Santana’s take on Herbie Mann’s Mother Africa:

Third, it introduced me to John Coltrane, whose song Going Home is the opening track on the album. Also, Alice Coltrane plays piano and organ on the album’s first and last track. Finally, Welcome introduced me to guitarist John McLaughlin, who duels with Carlos Santana in the epic Flame - Sky. Next to The Turning Point, this was perhaps the most influential album in the early years of my journey.

Later on, when I was going to school in New York and I was able to get down to the Greenwich Village record stores, I found another important Santana album Caravanserai. That was another album that had a big impact - Song of the Wind remains one of my favorite songs. Interestingly, released a year before Welcome, it featured Greg Rolie and Neal Schon, who in 1973 would leave Santana to form Journey.

2.) Grover Washington Jr.’s 1978 Reed Seed, which was one of the first new albums I ever bought. In the late 1970s, St. Paul had a pretty good “smooth jazz” radio station that played a couple of times a week at night. I’d listen to it and do my homework. When the song Maracas Beach came on, I wrote it down and went to the record store and bought the album. I think it was this album that made me fall in love with the saxophone. Here’s that song:

3.) Weather Reports’ Tale Spinnin’, which bought a used record store in St. Paul after hearing Badia on the radio. Badia, in particular, continued the African-influenced sounds I had only encountered before on Welcome. It was the sound that years later would draw me to Sun Ra. Here’s Freezing Fire, another scorcher from the album - I love Wayne Shorter’s sax solo on this one:

These three important albums started me down that Big River called Jazz. There would be many others too. You can read about them all in my earlier weekly “field notes”, as I call them, which started over two years ago. And there were many important books too. Graham Lock’s 1989 Forces in Motion introduced me to Anthony Braxton, the AACM, and Sun Ra. I had been reading about Sun Ra and his Arkestra in The Wire magazine for years, but it was Lock’s chapter on Sun Ra that inspired me to go see them for the first time in San Francisco in late 1989.

It took many years, but that’s how you get from Fred Astaire to Sun Ra. I just followed my heart and it took me on a long journey that continues today.

Here’s one more for the road. Since this is a look back at those early days of my jazz journey, I’d like to share a song that touched me when I first heard it in the late 1970s on Mark-Almond’s album Rising. It’s called Organ Grinder and it’s not jazz, but important nonetheless. This past week is the first time I’d played that song since both my parents passed away - my mother most recently last year. Here is that song:

Listening to it now made a new and deeper impression on me and helped me to remember that growing up my mother was always my biggest supporter. It seems in all my endeavors, however strange, she was always there - stage left. I could count on her for support, and for that, I will be forever thankful. I dedicate this week’s journey to her, Margery Lilian Wickes.

Next week on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig our paddles in to explore the waters of my earliest memories of Sun Ra, which will finally bring us officially from Fred Astaire to Sun Ra.

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Until then, keep on walking….